ii ABSTRACT This study presents an attempt to apply systemic functional grammar to investigating a political speech addressed by President Nguyen Minh Triet on the occasion of the 1000 th anniversary of the foundation of Thang Long – Hanoi. Based on a brief overview of systemic functional grammar introduced by Halliday, the study focuses on language functions (ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction, and textual metafunction) which are represented via transitivity pattern, mood pattern and theme - rheme pattern, and on cohesion (grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion) of the text. The findings show that in terms of transitivity pattern, relational process is predominant, in terms of mood pattern, declarative mood is in the widest use and topical theme which forms unmarked one is the most striking feature in terms of theme pattern. Moreover, grammatical cohesion represented by reference and conjunctive devices and lexical cohesion shown via repetition, synonyms, meronyms and hyponyms make the text more cohesive and coherent.
The analysis proves that systemic functional grammar is the smartest choice for those whose concern is for structure and meaning of a particular text. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………… i ABSTRACT ……. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………………… iii LIST OF MARKERS AND ABBREVIATIONS ………. iv LIST OF TABLES ………………………………………………………………….
Rationale of the Study ………………………………………………………. Aims of the Study. Scopes of the Study. Method of the Study ….
Design of the Study …. 3 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. The Linguistic System. Concept of Cohesion ………………………………………….
Types of Cohesion. 18 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv III. CHAPTER 3: THE MEANING AND STRUCTURE OF PRESIDENT 19 NGUYEN MINH TRIET’S SPEECH ON THE OCCASION OF 1000TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDATION OF THANG LONG – HANOI 3. The Context of the Chosen Text ………………………………………………….
Contextual Configuration of the Text. Clauses and Clause Complexes …………………………………………………. The Analysis of the text in terms of Transitivity, Mood and Theme ……………. The Transitivity Pattern ………………………………………………… 27 3.
The Mood Pattern. The Theme – Rheme Pattern …………………………………………… 36 3. The Cohesion of the Text. Structure of the Text.
Implications for the Study ………………………………………………………. Suggestions for Further Study ……………………………………………………. IV APPENDIX III ………………………………………………………………………. VIII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v LIST OF MARKERS AND ABBREVIATIONS REP Repetition ANT Antonym MER Meronym HYP Hyponym SYN Synonym COL Collocation Anaphoric reference Exophoric reference LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Types of Circumstances …………………………………………….
9 Table 2: Clause and Clause Complexes .…………………………………………… 22 Table 3: Transitivity Pattern of the Text ……………………………………………. 28 Table 4: Mood Pattern of the Text .………………………………………………… 33 Table 5: Theme – Rheme Pattern of the Text ….…………………………………… 37 Table 6: Grammatical Cohesive Devices of the Text …….………………………… 40 Table 7: Conjunctive Devices of the Text. 42 Table 8: Lexical Devices Summary ………………………………………………… 43 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the Study The more modern society is, the more complex language has become.
It has evolved to satisfy human needs, and the way it is organized is functional with respect to these needs. An important move in linguistics in recent years has introduced a new model and method of description of language known as Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) in which everything can be explained, ultimately, by reference to how language is used. Different from formal grammar which focuses on written language and deals with rules of correct usage rather than with meaning and context of the text, functional grammar centers on both written and spoken language and emphasize how linguistic structures express meaning and views language as a communicative resource, not as grammatical rules. It is considered “an effective tool of analysis, which solves the issues left out by traditional grammar” as it helps understand human language more deeply.
With its own benefits, SFG has been thoroughly investigated by many well-known linguists worldwide such as M. In Vietnam, though it has received considerable attention, there has not much research on this except Cao Xuân Hạo with the work “Tiếng Việt – Sơ thảo ngữ pháp chức năng” (1991), and the work “Ngữ pháp kinh nghiệm của cú Tiếng Việt mô tả theo quan điểm chức năng hệ thống” by Hoàng Văn Vân (2002) and some other researches on other aspects like “Thematic structure in Vietnamese” by Đỗ Tuấn Minh and “Bàn thêm về phạm trù thức trong Tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt (theo quan điểm chức năng hệ thống)” by Trần Hữu Mạnh, etc. The reason is that SFG is still new in Vietnam. Thus, an investigation into Vietnamese from systemic functional perspective seems a hard and time - taking work for not only linguists but researchers as well.
However, those studies have made great contributions to the development of functional grammar in Vietnam and inspired me to choose this grammar model as the theoretical framework for my MA thesis. Furthermore, I myself find SFG really useful and interesting as LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 it provides us an analytic tool to examine the logico-semantic relations that structure a text thoroughly and comprehensively. Moreover, I would like to try myself in a new but exciting linguistic field, analyzing a Vietnamese text – its structure and meaning from systemic functional perspective to see how the findings can help my understanding of Vietnamese. For those reasons, I have decided to choose SFG as the field of my study and take “The meaning and structure of President Nguyen Minh Triet’s speech addressed on the occasion of the 1000 th anniversary of the foundation of Thang Long – Hanoi: A systemic functional analysis” as a text for my thesis, using Halliday’s functional grammar as a theoretical framework.
Aims of the Study Within the framework of a minor thesis, the study aims at: Examining some basic notions related to the meatafunctions of language: experiential, interpersonal and textual metafunction. Analyzing the meaning and structure of President Nguyen Minh Triet’s speech addressed on the occasion of the 1000 th anniversary of the foundation of Thang Long – Hanoi based on the systemic functional framework. Suggesting some pedagogical implications. Scope of the Study As a minor thesis, not all aspects of functional grammar are explored but only some of them such as linguistic system, metafunctions and cohesion.
The focus of the study, however, does not lie in the theoretical findings but hopefully, on this fundamental theory, will enlighten the political text analysis. Methods of the Study With a view to analyzing the meaning and structure of a Vietnamese text, descriptive and analytical methods are used. The former is concerned with the description of the main areas of functional grammar and the latter deals with the analysis of the text for discussion. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Data collection The text is transcribed from the speech addressed by President Nguyen Minh Triet on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the foundation of Thang Long, Ha Noi on 10th October 2010. Design of the Study This thesis is divided into four chapters as follows: Chapter one – Introduction – presents the rationale of the study, the aims of the study, scope of the study, methods of the study, data collection, and the research design. Chapter two – Theoretical Background – supplies some fundamental and theoretical concepts for the study: linguistic system, metafunctions and cohesion analysis. Chapter three – The Analysis of President Nguyen Minh Triet’s speech addressed on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the foundation of Thang Long - Hanoi – focuses on its meaning and structure.
Chapter four – Conclusion – summarizes the results of the study and offers some suggestions for teaching and learning as well as for further studies. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS 2. Introduction This chapter will re-examine some basic concepts that are considered to set the theoretical orientation for the study: the linguistic system, metafunctions and cohesion. Examples are taken from grammar books by such famous linguists as Halliday (1985, 1994), Geoff Thomson (1996), Hoàng Văn Vân (2002, 2005 & 2006), and other researchers like Đỗ Tuấn Minh (2006), Thái Minh Đức (2004), etc.
The linguistic system Language is viewed as systems of meaning potential in human interaction that are realized by various structures formed in certain contexts which are studied under register. In systemic grammar, register is conceptualized in terms of three parameters: field, tenor and mode. - Filed of discourse refers to what is happening, to the nature of the social action that is taking place: what is it that the participants are engaged in, in which the language figures as some essential components? - Tenor of discourse refers to who is taking part, to the nature of the participants, their statuses and roles: what kind of role relationships of one kind or another, both the types of speech role that they are taking on in the dialogue and the whole cluster of socially significant relationships in which they are involved? - Mode of discourse refers to what part the language is playing, what it is that the participants are expecting the language to do for them in that situation: the symbolic organization of the text, the status that it has, and its function in the context, including the channel (is it spoken or written or some combination of the two?) and also the rhetorical mode, what is being achieved by the text in terms of such categories as persuasive, expository, didactic and the like. (Halliday in Halliday & Hassan, 1989:12) LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 These three variables are deemed to be the only aspects of the context of situation of a text that are linguistically relevant to accomplish a particular social goal.
It will be embedded in the text by being realized in the semantic and grammatical structures of the text. Metafunctions From the sociological point of view, Halliday (1970, 1985) developed a theory of the fundamental functions of language into three broad metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual. Each functional component corresponds to each parameter register as the working hypothesis: field - ideational; tenor - interpersonal; mode - textual. Ideational Metafunction Language is used to organize, understand and express our perceptions of the world and our consciousness.
It is the means of representing reality and known as the ideational function. It consists of experiential meanings and logical meanings (Halliday, 1994: 179). The experiential function is concerned with contents or ideas whereas the logical function is about the relationship between ideas. Process types Experiential meanings are realized through the system of transitivity that, according to Halliday (1994), construes the world of experience into a manageable set of process types.
Like English, Vietnamese transitivity systems are composed by six types: Material Process, Mental Process, Verbal Process, Behavioral Process, Relational Process, and Exitential Process (for more detailed discussion of the Process types in Vietnamese, see Hoàng Văn Vân (2002, 2005)). Material Process is the process of doing or happening. There is an obligatory participant, the Actor, which is the doer of the action and an optional participant named Goal or Range. Sometimes a material clause in Vietnamese may optionally specify a Recipient (the one to whom something is given) or a Client (the one for whom something is done).
In Vietnamese, the Recipient (realized by a nominal group) precedes the Goal; the Client may either precede LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 6 the Goal or occur in the final position of the clause, marked with a preposition “cho”. They are represented via such kinds of Vietnamese verbs as “bay đi, hoàn thành, nấu, chơi, etc.